According to the company, "As a result of the merger, Novell's common stock will cease trading on The NASDAQ Global Select Market at the close of business on April 27, 2011, and Novell expects to de-register and suspend its reporting obligations. BNY Mellon Shareowner Services has been appointed to serve as the agent for payment of the merger consideration to Novell's stockholders, and will promptly mail to stockholders of record instructions on how to surrender their stock certificates and receive payment for their shares."

Attachmate, which started as a terminal emulation company in 1982, is privately held. Its primary owners are the private equity firms Francisco Partners, Golden Gate Capital and Thoma Bravo. Today, the Attachmate side of the company still works in X Window and terminal emulation. Its other half, NetIQ, sells and services systems and security management software. It would seem Novell will continue to sell the company's directory services and IT management programs, while SuSE will continue to focus on Linux.

What this will mean for the management of these re-seperated groups is an unanswered question at this moment. One would presume that they'd each have their own executive teams.

Now that the deals are done, we'll have to see if Attachmate lives up to its promises to keep supporting Linux. Since Novell's-excuse me-SuSE's main business is Linux, I can only hope that this will be the case. If not, well Red Hat and Canonical, Ubuntu Linux's parent company, will be glad for the business.